


a stillness alive

by LittleRaven



Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Eerily pristine abandoned places / Eldritch locations, Eldritch, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Fairies, Gen, Ghost Drifting, Goblins, Haunting, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 08:15:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16059140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: First there were three.





	a stillness alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



They tell you stories about the goblin folk. They hide in the woods, in the mountains, in the stream on the hill by your house. They don’t hide at all, singing like doves, like crows, the sound of a dying swan in full wing. You know exactly what they look like. 

 

You sleep in your sister’s bed still. No reason not to. Now more than ever, with Jeanie’s side heavy on your back and Laura just now safe. Just now, warmed by you. It’s a dream made real by the coming of the dawn. You don’t belong to the moon, you know; neither must Laura. The sun is honey in your hair, your tongues when together you pluck the honeycomb out for a quick bite before you bring it home for supper. 

You spend your days outside when you can, at first. However much you can. Drink up the light. But there are shadows here, at the corner of your eye. There, at the brook, by the rock half sunken below the surface. On the other side of the rushes, once swept away. You keep yourself from looking, turn your head away. You look at Laura, her hair covering eyes that dart, though she will not look. Not fully, not closely. 

You walk farther and farther for your water, tugging Laura beside you, careful with the green moss on the rocky bank. 

Thirst curdles the sweet air you suck in, the glen soft under your feet. 

 

You start seeing them in the house. Laura scrubs at the nooks, at the fireplace, and you join her, wiping muck and soot. The earth is hard, sticking in place. “I’m sorry,” Laura tells you, “I couldn’t be there to help you all this time.” You say “no, don’t make anything of it, we are here.” We is the most important word in the world. 

First there were three. 

Now, you know, there are two and that is something everyone can live with. It’s enough that there isn’t one. 

Laura presses her forehead against yours, in your shared bed, and together you ignore the shadows pressing from the moon-filled window. 

Evenings and mornings, you stay by the fire, you sleep in to the smell of the dead coals, you are warmed by the embers as they leave the house. You move your bed by the fireplace. 

 

You march off to the trees, pluck a cherry. Bunches of them, redder than how the sun can make you when you bask in it. 

The juice is as ripe as ever, a soft explosion on your tongue and you suck on the stem. It’s bright in your hands. You flick it off, away into the grass, between the roots of a hardened tree older than you care to know. There is a sound. You ignore the bird that must’ve come to claim it. 

Fruit, you decide, must be enjoyed still. It will not be taken from you, and you make sure Laura knows this too. You let her follow you; you press the cherries into her hands, feel how they stick to your own, still wet. 

 

You go to Jeanie’s grave, both of you. The dirt is as barren as when it was upturned, packed tightly over your missing third. She was light and golden as you. Just as sweet. With Laura’s curiosity, her boldness, without your voice in her head and before you knew what an endless vigil was like. 

You leave a small pot of honey. Cherry blossoms; a wreath of them, a bouquet, a single flower cupped in your hands. You leave the fruit itself, served without the honey, raw and naked as it was picked by your hands. Both of you. 

The cherry pits never grow into saplings, though you go every week—never one at a time—and your cherry blossoms wilt. You feel you must be deflowering the whole land with every one you pick for her. You wonder if you should switch back to daisies. Laura laughs; you do too, and the sound is loud in your house. 

 

This last winter, you stop going. There is one more visit, with all the autumn wreaths you can weave, the last of your fruits. You hold hands, stand at the foot of Jeanie’s grave, and you watch. No wind has ever stirred a petal, no bee neared the honey. Everything dries. It’s not a place for them.

Neither is the glen, anymore. You know that much. You see it in Laura when she looks away, out the window, and you catch her with your eyes before she can keep looking. You hear it in the way the trees don’t always blow, in the birdsong your eyes don’t follow to the source. 

Your eyes look sometimes, in the moments when Laura falls asleep before you, but you close them right after. 

The house is quiet, and the fire dies often. You sleep nevertheless, because Laura is asleep, and you don’t have to wonder if she does the same when you’re the first to rest. 

 

The sun is still tentative on the first snowdrop when you leave. There’s another house, in the village, no wood-wandering required. No farming. Your weaving is famous in it. You’ve both had the practice of it. Now only the living will wear it, sleep in it, adorn their houses. The living for the living, you think, but don’t say. You are not a storyteller. 

You leave that to the villagers, the ones who know you as the girls whose sister died. You smile always, wonder that the response should keep them talking. “Maybe they’re not used to smiling,” Laura says, “here in this crowded place.” You let her complain of the stone, of the straw, the way it surrounds them. You don’t say anything, but you know it’s true. 

At least the trees don’t need to blow with the wind when they aren’t there, though the moon still fills your window as you lie down. 

 

It’s light, just light now. It’s setting. The moon is leaving. You sit up, holding Laura’s hand. You tread softly on the cobbled streets, away from your new, empty little house. You are at the edge of the village, where the moon is bright on the fields. The trees are dark up on the hill. There is a figure there, reaching; you taste the sharp sweetness of cherries. You walk, swinging your hands. 

 

They tell stories. The goblin folk always like to let you know they are coming.


End file.
